


Duress

by deathwailart



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Backstory, Drabble, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 11:08:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1938639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Bronach came to Skryim; killing the wrong Thalmor, dealing with Nords and not giving a damn about the summons of the Greybeards.</p>
<p>Written for the 30 day drabble challenge: duress</p>
            </blockquote>





	Duress

Little here is her choice. Even the simple act of being here isn't her choice. Impressed upon her. A botched plan – well, not botched, it went off without a hitch, she was always good, always lean and hard and hungry, always made sure she visualised the arrow punching through the golden skin of a Thalmor agent's throat – and her father grabbing her by the shoulders. Looking old for the first time. To her at least, she had always felt as old as him since her siblings had gone, since the Wild Hunt and her mother, since every conversation she and her father had turned to what watch and soft whistles and gestures when hunting game or those sleek black cloaks and uniforms.  
  
"I cannot lose another," he had implored and pressed all he could into her hands. Bone arrows, dried meat and what they smoked and what they drank, spare bows and lock picks and what coin they scavenged and the least ruined of the Thalmor cloaks. She'd argued but he'd forced it into her hands, the indigo bar of paint across his eyes making him look more severe. "You will go."  
  
"Where?" She'd asked. Growled. Sullen as a child, testing the weight of her pack and weapons, always light on her feet, always.  
  
"North. You go north. Nowhere to go south, I know you."  
  
So north. Tramping from Falinesti through to Arenthia, crossing the border to Cyrodiil and the Imperial city, skirting and picking up jobs here and there. Never staying long. Skeevers to eat and keeping the Green Pact, ending up amongst the Dunmer because they were close enough. But north. North and into Skyrim and Stormcloaks and a _dragon_.  
  
She does not want to be here but there is nowhere else to go and she looks for work and finds herself being named Thane. Housecarls to clatter after her until she dismisses them and continues alone. Scrapes a place amongst the thieves, slips in with the Dark Brotherhood, daedra here and daedra there (wolf pelt, mace, ebony blade, beacons and stars and other things to keep in a chest of a house she never sleeps in, Lydia silent and watchful) and then they summon her. Greybeards. Nord words and Nord men and Nord prophecy. The voice that makes the earth shake as dragons burn to flames and something shifts within her.  
  
Not her choice.  
  
Not her choice to come here. Not her choice to be summoned.  
  
So she resists. Pledges her soul to Nocturnal and becomes more shadow than anything real. Listens to the Night Mother and sees her eyes glow like embers.  
  
Not her choice to march here or to shoulder the destiny and name of a people who look at her sideways, who call her _elf_ the same way they call a dog a cur. Her choice though to ignore these Greybeards, to slip into caves and let the dragons do what they will, to ignore the civil war and not care about their dead king, to snipe wildlife and giants and Thalmor, looting and stealing and learning to craft her own life here. She takes jobs for the coin and the boons, crawls through crypts and tombs and learns ancient words but nothing more, curling her lip each time she passes below the shadow of High Hrothgar and shouts the words as the dragons fall to her bow and her will.  
  
Her choice to ignore and to defy, her choice for once in such a long time.


End file.
